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avi12 / web-ext-deploy

A tool for deploying WebExtensions to multiple stores.
GNU General Public License v3.0
49 stars 5 forks source link

WebExtension Developers Alliance #3

Closed ImprovedTube closed 2 years ago

ImprovedTube commented 3 years ago

hi there =) whats your discord? it is very impressive that you published 20+ projects, and distributed in different channels.

(are you using ImprovedTube? / making this extension https://github.com/code4charity/YouTube-Extension)

it is so sad to see that little extensions, more often than not, won't surpass a few 1000 users or don't serve a unique purpose, don't make the developer happy, won't be maintained in 5 or 10 years.
At the same time Open-Source could be so much more efficient ( https://github.com/code4charity/Open-Source-Bot--Github-Pull-Request-Bot--Auto-Git-Contributor/blob/main/README.md )
(And in our niche, for example, even awesome projects with 100,000 users just resigned their maintenance eventually. example: https://github.com/YePpHa/YouTubeCenter & iridium)

Let's say right now there might be only less than 50 people in the world, who work on youtube extensions as much and seriously as you do. - Then why don't many of them team up? (Any benefit in this "diversity? Fragmentation of efforts. a single developer who has a good amount of users might work more happily/motivated than several who each have few users. so competition can be unneccessary(/preventing one perfect/flawless result)

And the most striking(unique) work isn't done yet. (Let alone maintenance duties secured for long).
We have 150+ feature requests waiting. And there are other projects, with more purposes pockettube, sponsorblock, https://github.com/Eugene-Gubar/YCS , etc.)
(And we look forward to pass on donations(if any) And when providing a feature as a standalone extension, it would sometimes be more fun (/efficient/'educational) than re-developing, to add a build-script to a package (like ImprovedTube), copying/scraping that feature's code. (upwards compatible. saving maintenance hassles) And so on,..., ..._

👋Curious what you think!👋 (just wrote this, might move some of this content to our /discussions or readme later)

avi12 commented 3 years ago

Hey, it's cool that I'm starting to get recognized by extensions with large user bases! Teaming up sounds very cool! How do you see us teaming up? Discord: avi12#4269

ImprovedTube commented 3 years ago

hey :) to be more precise / in other words:

teaming (/volunteering)

trying to know people & understand. Won't guess today what will be the best next effort for you/somebody to try today. Just the obvious conclusion: Synergy (through being more unique/less repetitive as a group than alone) - More positive impact (, more reputation, more potential compensation [generally, contributors of big/combined projects could remain equally independent / exclusive licences/prominent mentions/link of credits/...])

Extension developers are not just playing/practicing

taking the zoomed-out pespective feels strange/sad as said. I.e. why would several volunteers(,who have passion for what they do and want to do good in the world and possibly volunteer/donate much of their time), all do work on the same goal/feature, each alone? ( And without a competitive reason but financial fear/risk even more often than not) - So they just dont talk? are introverts?). Obviously you and us (and X more people) have resilience to keep on working. Yet no maintenance in X years should be mandatorily done by the same author, for your/our contributions to remain benefitial. (i guess that's one reason people choose Open source.) Yet even a repo with 5000 stars is not a guarantee to be continued the day that the main author leaves)_ In theory ImprovedTube should auto charge just 1 cent per user per month, to ensure muuch more development. Same for every unique/appreciated/hard-to-developer single feature project. (Yet solutions like brave browser are still small so it still might require a long breath (and wont be very competitive then either, if ever)

compare:

there is only one current Version of Wikipedia. (For example) the Wikipedia article about Youtube for has 50000 daily readers, 3200 watchers, 85000 characters, 4000 previous editors and about 0 competitiors. Our works should be more similar in metrics(?) (mostly unique. more editors/selfsustaining maintenance). Despite Improvedtube has a long history it is not selfsustaining and wont get easier to maintain for free/alone. Obviously it is not our greatest dream to be strong in this niche like this. We are just willing to take the responsability. - So question of the day: how to make people starting now, consider to work together (with us or you) rather than alone?

VS. "Partnerships":

assuming we'd value full independence/"decentral power" extremely, than 100 alternative extension developers/owners with 50000 users each might still have an advantage (no single point of failture), above for example one charity association serving 5million users. - still in that case many of the same points apply. I.e. the 100 developers should sync somehow and have a common ToDo list? Share some of he same / non-critical repos.